To end this month on health, why don’t you draw yourself a well-deserved warm bath. Go ahead and light some
candles, get our your bath salts,
Be generous with yourself.
prepare for a godly marriage | pursue relationship with Jesus | build a foundation for a Kingdom-advancing life
To end this month on health, why don’t you draw yourself a well-deserved warm bath. Go ahead and light some
candles, get our your bath salts,
Be generous with yourself.
I failed to mention in the last post (and I’m SO sorry if I gave the wrong impression): Bricklayers is not going dormant!
I (Cristina) may be a bit off the radar right now as I focus on my own “bricklaying” but the Beautiful Bricklayers in Orange County are actively meeting and preparing for continued involvement of the Bricklayers community. Laura Vencill (pictured with her husband, Mike) and Cassie Robertson are leading these events. They are particularly focused on leading a monthly prayer meeting in Irvine and hope to start up a new Bricklayers class later this year as well. Keep an eye out for dates and times here on the blog and also on our Facebook page.
Hopefully, you have enjoyed your 31 Day
Husband Prayer Journey! Please contact us to let us know how it went and if you have any ideas for ways to encourage other women who will do this in the future. Although the 31 days will be over on Sunday (Easter!) if you started with us on March 21st with Week One, we encourage you to carry on this wonderful gift of lifting up your future (or current) husband in prayer on a daily basis.
Let’s dive in to praying over the Social areas of Mr. Husband’s life!
“Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear;
in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.
They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor,
their righteousness endures forever;
their horn will be lifted high in honor.
The wicked will see and be vexed,
they will gnash their teeth and waste away;
the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.“
Instead of giving you several ideas for ways to pray this week, we’re offering just one. We’ll keep it simple. Most importantly, we hope you connect with the Lord in an intimate way!
Let’s link arms in uplifting these men in prayer for the Emotional area this week:
“Surely the righteous will never be shaken;
they will be remembered forever.
They will have no fear of bad news;
their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord...”
Keep persevering in prayer! Hopefully, you are finding ways to dig into prayer, but here are some more ideas for you to try:
Husband.
This week’s focus is on the Mental. Consider praying for these areas this week:
“Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.
5 Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely,
who conduct their affairs with justice..”
Laura Vencill, a dear friend, spurs you on in her challenge to pray intentionally for Mr. Husband in the area of sexuality. Laura is leading up the Monthly Prayer Nights in Orange County starting in April!
Pray for his purity and protection from sexual temptation.
As you pray for Mr. Husband, a powerful subject for prayer is his mind, heart, and body in the area of sexuality. By the time you meet him, your future husband may have saved himself for you faithfully, or he may have given in to temptation and acquired some battle wounds along his journey. You may be in either of those camps, too. We can’t know what kind of story our future spouse will show up with, but we can pray for him early and often. Let’s do everything in our power to support our future lover toward a victorious, God-honoring and joyful sexuality.
Pray that God will guard and keep him from sexual sin. Start praying even now that your husband would be “self-controlled and alert,” that he would seek help if he is in bondage to an addiction.
We live in a day and age where it’s hard to find any guy who hasn’t been exposed at all to pornography. It’s less a question of, “will he encounter it?” and more of “when he encounters it, how old will he be and will he be ensnared by it or able to refuse its sway?” Ask that God will keep him from pornography, that his mind might be protected from storing up a playbook of sexual images and expectations. But, pray hard, Beautiful Bricklayer, that if he does encounter it, God will have the victory and he will quickly make wise choices about how to safeguard his mind from it.
Pray that the Lord will speak truth into Mr. Husband’s mind that speak louder than the devil’s lies that are disseminated by pornography and many movies and even magazines; lies that tell us that sex is all about performance; that it is about “getting” rather than “sharing” or loving; that you have to look or sound or behave in a certain way or else your spouse won’t think you’re sexy. Prayers like this can truly make a powerful impact.
Beautiful Bricklayers, whoever God says is clean is clean indeed.
If he has stumbled and fallen sexually in the past, that can cause a lot of pain and sorrow, but it does not have to be a red flag. The Lord has cleansed him of all unrighteousness if he has received the Lord’s forgiveness and turned from those old ways. So, if his life evidences change, and he does not pressure you physically but respects your boundaries, and if He has confessed and been freed from the hold it had on him, then I urge you to believe and trust that he is truly a new creation. Above all you are looking for a Godly man, so pray that if your Mr.Husband will pursue Godliness and passionate purity by the time you walk into his life.
How was your first week of praying daily for Mr. Husband? Here are a few more ideas of ways to incorporate prayer into your daily life:
Since we are covering the Spiritual, Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Social aspects of his life, this week we are going to focus on the Physical. Here are some potential prayer prompts for this next week:
“Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.”
Here we go, ladies! The discipline of praying for our men doesn’t have to be very complicated. It can be quite straightforward. If today is your Day 1 on this Husband Prayer Journey, then your Day 31 will be on Easter (April 20th)! Look for these weekly prayer prompts on Fridays here on the blog.
May I offer you a few tips?
We’ll be covering the Spiritual, Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Social aspects of his life. Here are some potential prayer prompts for this next week regarding the Spiritual:
Praise the Lord. Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands. Their children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.
Psalm 112:1-2, NIV
Happy Spring! Coming out of the super cold winter we had this year, I couldn’t be happier to embrace springtime!
To launch this new season, we are announcing a month-long opportunity. Many of you have expressed a desire to get serious about praying for that special man that will be (or is already) your husband.
I went for years praying here and there for Mr. Cristina, but it wasn’t until about 6 months before I met my husband that I actually took the step to get fervent, persistent, and consistent in my conversations with God about this man who I did not yet know. Whether you are in the same place I was when I started (totally single) or you are dating or engaged – you can still pray daily for your husband. Hopefully, this will be a life-giving discipline that continues after marriage. I will be taking this challenge along with you! There’s always more to bring to God in prayer!
The “Husband Prayer Journey” is a 31-day challenge designed to help you pray a little (or a lot) every day for your life partner (present or future husband). This adventure will help you become disciplined, get better aligned with God’s heart, and ultimately grow as a woman who loves Jesus!
Ready to get this party started?
Guidelines:
yourself!
Here’s the plan:
Every Friday we will post prayer prompts for the following week. Feel free to use these as launching pads for your daily prayer or comment on these posts to add your own! So are you in?! Grab your Bible, journal, maybe even a trusted girlfriend or mentor, and get started!
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”
1 John 5:14-15
My favorite thing about being involved with this ministry is simply getting to know some phenomenal women (who are actually featured in this short clip).
One particular friend, Laura Vencill, is one that blesses me on a regular basis. This ministry actually started in my home when we were both single, yearning to learn what it means to love the Lord with our whole hearts and seeking to prepare on purpose for marriage. We finished with a prayer get-together with one other girl and the three of us looked up at each other and knew God started something special through that prayer time. Beautiful Bricklayers was conceived.
Over the past three years, Laura has been a faithful cheerleader of my writing, speaking, and development as a person. I’ve learned a lot about true friendship from this sweet sister in Christ and it’s with joy that I present to you another video you can share with your friends when you are trying to explain a little better what is at the core of this ministry.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8GrprHqpPw&w=560&h=315]
You’re always welcome to contact us here with any prayer requests, questions, or anything else you’d like to share with us. We’d love to hear from you.